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Back in March 2006, I wrote about an outing to Mudpuppy Night, which takes place at the Oxford Mills dam just about every Friday night throughout the winter season. Last night, we packed up my camera gear and an aquarium, and headed off into the frigid night to meet up with Dr. Fred Schueler and Aleta Karstad, of the Bishops Mills Natural History Centre, along with several other interested naturalists from the area. Fred, Aleta and daughter, Jennifer, have now studied this population of aquatic Mudpuppy Salamander (Necturus maculosus) through eight winter seasons.

So, what do these Mudpuppies do? As I wrote back in March:

In winter, Mudpuppy salamanders are found just below the Oxford Mills dam in an area where the cold, clear water of Kemptville Creek flows between the flat stone of the riverbed and sheets of ice several centimeters above. The following rather dark photos gives some idea of the location — a stone dam with heavy ice formations in the gates, and water gushing through to flow through the area where Mudpuppies wander after dark as they search for food (frogs, tadpoles, small fish, crayfish) around the rock ledges beneath the sheets of ice. They are capable of walking in a fairly strong current, and at times, they switch from walking to swimming by holding their legs against their bodies as they propel themselves forward with fish-like movements of body and tail.

Last night, I made a couple of little movie clips. This is an .mp4 version of a Mudpuppy on the move. I’ve also made a QuickTime version in case it works better for some of you. I’ve pieced together 3 very brief clips of a Mudpuppy moving about inside the aquarium that Don lugged down to the water’s edge last night. I should probably mention that the red feathery looking appendages around the Mudpuppy’s neck are its gills — this species of salamander is entirely aquatic, so requires them to breathe.

Above is a photo of the dam as it appeared last night (click on image for larger view). As you can see, there’s some snow on the ground, and ice is now rapidly building up in the gates where water gushes through. When you view the video clips, you’ll probably notice the sound of rushing water. If the cold weather continues, the open water below the dam will begin freezing over. The water level usually drops as well. This year has been very odd though. Until recently, the temperature has been unseasonably mild and we’ve had a lot of rain, so the level of Kemptville Creek has been quite high and there has been no ice formation to speak of until the past couple of weeks.

I thought you might like to get more of a feel for what it’s like to be out on Mudpuppy Night, so I made another short .mp4 clip of several people wading about in the cold, rushing water, scanning the flat limestone creek bed as they search for Mudpuppies. Each week, Fred and any willing volunteers, check out the creek bed, the stone ledges along the shorelines, and around the dam, to find and count, and occasionally measure and photograph, the Mudpuppies that have collected in the area to feed. Searchers wear tall rubber boots or hip waders, and carry bright flashlights. You have to be dressed warmly while down by or in the creek as it’s usually frigid between the dam and the bridge located just a stone’s throw downstream. The air is filled with great clouds of bone-chilling mist rising off the torrent blasting through the dam gates. As you might expect, it’s dark and cold and often quite easy to slip and fall. On my first trip to Mudpuppy Night on Dec. 28, 2000, while wading around shooting video footage, the current over-flowed my rubber boots and filled them to the top on a night when the temperature was well below -20 C (0 F). I got quite chilled by the end of a half-hour of sloshing along following Mudpuppies with my camcorder (you can find one of the video clips in the post from March 2006).

Edit: Since posting this piece, Fred Schueler has added his field notes for this Mudpuppy Night. You can see them here in the comments below.

If you’d like to see more photos of Mudpuppies, you could check out my online gallery.

If you’d like to know more about Mudpuppy salamanders, here are a few places to visit on the web:

• Bishops Mills Natural History Centre has several pages on Mudpuppy salamanders. This is a good summary of info. Here is the history and purpose of Mudpuppy Night in verse and prose, by Fred Schueler. This is what you will need to know if you want to come out for Mudpuppy Night at Oxford Mills. The following pages include photos and accounts of past outings. You can visit them here, and here, and here.
• CARCNET’s (Canadian Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Network) page.
• Animal Diversity Web’s page.

Tags: Mudpuppy salamander, Necturus maculosus, Bishops Mills Natural History Centre, Oxford Mills, Brigadoon Restaurant